


if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?

by meganseverafter



Series: in the end, all our stories are folklore [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, folklore ammiright?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25558372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganseverafter/pseuds/meganseverafter
Summary: The Doctor’s mostly avoided them, not wanting to remember the family he had after he killed every single one of his people. Goes to figure, he finds out the planet he thought he burned for a thousand years is locked away just like her in a separate universe. Course, if he managed to get one back he could get the other.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Twelfth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: in the end, all our stories are folklore [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852807
Comments: 13
Kudos: 66





	if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?

He shouldn’t be here. Not really. He doesn’t have a place here anymore. Hasn’t in oh so many years. Besides, technically speaking, he already _is_ here, in his tenth form, making sure that they’re properly mourned for, that their friends get the closure they deserve even as the women they're here to mourn live on in that parallel universe. 

He’s stuck to the back of the room, this new, grouchy face of his keeping people away. He shouldn’t be here after all these years, but with Clara gone home with the promise that he’d pick her up in a week, he had nothing better to do. Besides, he couldn’t stop thinking about his tenth life. The people he met then. His face is a reminder to save even just one person; Donna’s effects lasting even now, now that he’s remembered why he knew the lines on his face prior to looking in the mirror. 

But _Rose_ , she’s there in every other moment. Especially after how Clara took the regeneration. She’s the first since Rose to see one body to the next, and even with her awareness that he’d regenerate eventually, she still didn’t take it well. Perhaps that’s just the human way these days. He can’t help but wonder what Rose would say now that he’s finally shown the human equivalent of just how truly _old_ he is. He’d wondered the same with his last body, but that was to be expected given that her’s was nearly the last face he saw. He hasn’t thought of her in years and seen her in hundreds longer than that, so why he’s _here_ of all places, _now_ , he doesn’t know. 

He’s certain he put the coordinates in for the open market with the good ship parts on Kaboosh. Evidently even with what a mess his and the TARDIS’s regeneration were, she’s decided she doesn’t want him working on her today. She had other ideas and landed him here, having decided he needed to visit old ghosts instead apparently. He knows she still misses Rose, just as much as he does. A chronic pain that’ll never get better, one that you just have to cope with. And he has, far better than his tenth self is doing now. 

The Doctor can see himself, parading around as the widower he was for all intents and purposes, thanking people for their condolences and offering his in return up at the front of the room, where there are two pictures – one for Jackie and one for Rose – on easels, just so you know who’s service you’re attending. It was morbid and necessary at the time, what with so many dead due to the battle. There are more pictures of the two of them and their family around the room. The Doctor’s mostly avoided them, not wanting to remember the family he had after he killed every single one of his people. Goes to figure, he finds out the planet he thought he burned for a thousand years is locked away just like her in a separate universe. Course, if he managed to get one back he could get the other. 

_No_. She’s happy and human and living out her terribly short lifespan with the metacrisis and parents. Besides, who’s to say she’d even still want this new daft old face? 

“It was a lovely service, wasn’t it?” a voice asks, interrupting his self-deprecation. It’s a woman, one he’s fairly sure he’s never seen before, even when he was the stick in sandshoes. And yet there’s something about her that makes him wonder.

“I suppose,” He replies tersely, hoping it’ll get this stranger to leave him to stew on his own. 

“Poor bloke, though. He seems like he’s barely holding it together. Will it ever get better, you think?” She asks, her head tilt in a manner that reminds him all too well of a certain blonde, her long brown hair falling in near ringlets across her shoulder. But this woman isn’t _her_ , he’s knows. (Happy and healthy and so alive, even at this wake, and yet so beyond dead to him after all these years.)

He stares at her profile while she watches his tenth self with a twinge of concern, finally answering when she looks back at him expectantly, “Someday this pain will twine itself with all the other pain and loss until it’s near indistinguishable. It won’t stop hurting, but he’ll learn to cope. As we all do, eventually.” 

The woman merely hums in agreement, and there’s something all too knowing in her eyes for someone so young, someone who couldn’t possibly know all the man she’s talking about has lost nor how much he’s lost in the time it took to become the man she’s speaking to. 

“She really did love him, you know,” she says after a moment, her lips quirking up just a bit, “I’d wager she still does, even now.”

Oh he knows, he knows and he’s angry that this woman had the audacity to remind him of the one thing he could never keep. “She’s dead, remember? Can’t love someone from beyond the grave.”

“If she’s dead, what are _you_ doing here? Seems to me that you should’ve moved on by now. You could go anywhere you want, and yet you’re at a wake for a long dead girl and her mother.”

He can go anywhere he wants, just not _home_. To either of them. And damn this woman for guessing that if he’s read her knowing face correctly. “And just what do _you_ know about that, huh? Who even _are_ you? Because I haven’t the foggiest and there was a time that I knew every single person in this room.”

“Every single person but two. Me and you, hidden in the back, watching fixed moments we can’t change but can’t look away from either, just like always.”

“I don’t usually stick to the back, watching things happen. More of a do-er, myself.” He argues, and it rather feels nice in this new voice. Scottish accents argue quite nicely, if he can say so. 

“And yet here you are, with me, in the back of the room.” She saddles up closer to him now, wrapping her arm around his and it feels somehow right, even though he could’ve sworn this body wasn’t any sort of affectionate. 

So, he backs up, frowning at her. That’s good, he looks even more serious when he’s frowning. “Alright, am I supposed to know you? Because I’m getting rather tired of your little game and would quite like to get back to mourning days passed, if it’s all the same to you.”

“You did know, once. And you will again. I’m just here to get you to start looking. Timelines, you know?” She smiles with her tongue caught between her teeth and there’s no way, there’s just no way, and _yet_ , “Are you afraid of the big Bad Wolf, Doctor?”

“Rose?” He breathes after a moment, fairly sure that both his hearts have stopped but that might be because it feels as if all of time has stopped around them. This woman, _can’t_ be Rose, because Rose is alive living her fantastic life with her family in another universe and simultaneously dead to him for so many years now. Rose is his bright sunshine of a blonde twenty-year-old former shop girl and defender of the universe. Not this brunette woman that’s still so young but with eyes old enough to rival his standing at her own wake, kissing his cheek before backing away with the saddest smile he’s seen on those lips and how could he forget the way her eyes shined when she looked at him?

“Come find me, my Doctor. I’m just around your corner.” She says before disappearing out the door, gone before he could even make his legs move to chase after her. But that’s fine, really it is. Because he _will_ find her. 

He can go anywhere he wants, and he wants to go home.


End file.
